"From the Ted Talk by John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a new language"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And then, third — languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wtroe, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants sttiing in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the cstnnoanos. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main lgungaae, Amharic. That's fun.

Open Cloze

And then, third — languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he _____, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants _______ in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the __________. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main ________, Amharic. That's fun.

Solution

language

wrote

sitting

consonants

Original Text

And then, third — languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic. That's fun.